Bard envisions the liberal arts institution as the hub of a network, rather than a single, self-contained campus. Numerous institutes for special study are available on and off campus, connecting Bard students to the greater community.

The Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College embodies the fundamental belief that education and civil society are inextricably linked. In an age of information overload, it is more important than ever that citizens be educated and trained to think critically and be actively engaged with issues affecting public life.

Innovation Spread: Lessons from HIV

Presented by Kristina Talbert-Slagle

Tuesday, January 7, 20146:30 pm

Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater

HIV, which has 9 genes and makes 15 proteins, infects human cells that have 20,000 genes and make thousands of proteins. Despite having a miniscule set of biological tools and a structure that is far simpler than the cells it infects, HIV can successfully integrate into cellular DNA and spread, first among cells inside the body and then to other human bodies. In this presentation, Dr. Talbert-Slagle will describe her work using HIV as a biological model for the spread of global health innovations in complex systems, including a discussion of parallels between a cell and a complex human system and between HIV and a successful health innovation. This framework has been applied to understand the spread of global health innovations in low- and middle-income countries and also to the spread of an intervention to reduce door-to-balloon time among patients with ST segment elevation myocardial infarction in the United States.

Dr. Talbert-Slagle is an Associate Research Scientist and Lecturer at the Global Health Leadership Institute in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health.

Rove the Red Planet with Curiosity: Seeking Habitable Environments in Our Solar System

Wednesday, January 8, 20141:30 pm

Campus Center, Weis Cinema

Come along for an insider view of NASA’s latest rover on Mars. After surviving the so- called “7 minutes of terror,” it landed safely on Mars in August 2012. Since then we’ve been exploring the stunning floor of Gale Crater for signs of water and other evidence that Mars was once habitable. Hear the latest hot-off-the-presses science and see the latest beautiful images from the Red Planet, and learn how what we’re exploring fits into the exciting science of astrobiology.

Presenter: Laurie Leshin is dean of the School of Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Before joining Rensselaer, she spent six years at NASA in senior executive roles and was deputy head of the future Human Spaceflight Program. Dr. Leshin is a member of the science team for the Mars Curiosity rover mission, now roaming the surface of Mars.

Drinking from the Firehose: Infectious Diseases in the Age of Big Data

Presented by Annie Hoen

Wednesday, January 8, 20146:30 pm

Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater

Large, complex and dynamic datasets that reflect real world phenomena--so-called "big data"--are transforming science, government, business and the arts. In a rapidly changing world, big data has the potential to inform solutions to complex problems, but there are many challenges to overcome. Here I will discuss possible applications of big data to the complex and critical problem of infectious disease prevention and control. I will make an argument for the importance of information in understanding and controlling infectious threats to health and review conventional approaches to public health surveillance, preparedness and response for infectious diseases. Next I will discuss recent advances and new ideas for harnessing the power of big data for infectious disease control including applications to real-time surveillance, mapping, and outbreak investigation and the use of data mining, crowd sourcing, remote sensing and genomics. Examples will include specific disease systems such as influenza, dengue, and malaria. Finally, I will talk about challenges such as issues of spatial and temporal scale, computational hurdles and reliability, and comment on the outlook for big data science in infectious disease epidemiology.

Dr. Hoen is an instructor at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth Department of Community and Family Medicine. She was also an instructor in the Citizen Science program in 2011 and 2012.

Presented by William Jacobs

Monday, January 13, 20146:30 pm

Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater

Infectious diseases have plagued mankind throughout history and have posed serious public health problems. Yet, vaccines have eradicated small pox and antibiotics have drastically decreased the mortality rate of many infectious agents. These remarkable successes in the control of infections came from knowing the causative agents of the diseases followed by serendipitous discoveries of attenuated viruses and antibiotics. Knowledge of the mechanisms of immunity and mechanisms of action of drugs has led to new vaccines and new antimicrobial agents. The key to the acquisition of the knowledge of these mechanisms has been identifying the elemental causes (i.e. genes and their products) that mediate immunity and drug resistance. The identification of these genes is made possible by being able to transfer the genes or mutated forms of the genes into causative agents or surrogate hosts. Such an approach was limited in Mycobacterium tuberculosis by the difficulty of transferring genes or alleles into M. tuberculosis or a suitable surrogate mycobacterial host. The construction of shuttle phasmids, chimeric molecules that replicate in Escherichia coli as plasmids and in mycobacteria as mycobacteriophages, was instrumental in developing gene transfer systems for M. tuberculosis. This presentation will discuss M. tuberculosis genetic systems and their impact on tuberculosis (TB) research.

Dr. Jacobs is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Men's Basketball Game

Tuesday, January 14, 20148 pm

Stevenson Athletic CenterBard hosts Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in its opening Liberty League game of the 2013-14 season. Come out and support the Raptors!Sponsored by: Department of Athletics and Recreation.

City Farms for City Dwellers

Presented by Dickson Despommier

Wednesday, January 15, 20146:30 pm

Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater

Urban agriculture is on the increase throughout the world. Urban farms are of several kinds: soil-based outdoor, soil-based indoor, single and multiple floor (vertical farms) indoor hydroponic and aeroponic farms. Aquaculture is also becoming popular. There are many vertical farms up and running in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Sweden, USA, and Canada. Most of them grow leafy greens for sale to restaurants and high end supermarkets, such as Whole Foods. Eventually, the concept of vertical farming will aid in bringing relief to disadvantaged populations (refugees, victims of wars and natural disasters). One consequence of farming in cities is that farmland can then be abandoned and allowed to return to its original ecological setting. This might help slow down climate change.

Dr. Despommier is an Emeritus Professor with appointments in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health Department of Microbiology, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University.

National Climate Seminar: Bike Sharing, NYC Style

Jeffrey S. Olson, Principal, Alta Planning & Design

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Jeff Olson has spent most of his life trying to create better connections between people and nature. He grew up in suburbia, where he saw how quickly a landscape of open space could become a placeless sprawl...and realized that better planning and design were the keys to the future. Jeff studied architecture and public policy, but there were two experiences that really shaped his vision: a year living in Rome, and a bike trip with friends between New York and Boston. He says, "I've worked in the non-profit, public and private sectors, but it has always been a vision of wanting to create a better world that has moved me forward." Jeff served as the first New York State DOT bike/pedestrian program manager, and then went on to lead the US Millennium Trails program before joining Alta. "I love my family, bicycling and skiing...creating balance is the key to work and life. We're making the world a better place, one project at a time." < Read Full Bio >

A Faculty Seminar Presented by Lianne Habinek

Wednesday, January 29, 20147 pm

Though Thomas Tomkis’ early 17th-century academic play Lingua, Or, The Combat of the Tongue, and the five Senses, for Superiority bills itself as “a pleasant comedy” that has “taught severe Philosophy to smile,” its chief conflicts involve civil war amongst the five senses in the land of Microcosmus and the serious revenge of the “half-sense” of language upon the other five. The play’s central and controversial figure is Lingua, a woman, who represents alternately speech (or, more broadly, discourse) and the tongue itself, and who desires to be numbered among the other (male) senses.

The key questions facing the reader of Lingua are two-fold: first, what is Lingua actually meant to represent, both from anatomical and allegorical standpoints; and second, what does such a characterization of the tongue as an effective agent of chaos reveal about the connection between body parts and senses on a broader scale? Lingua demonstrates the crucial role of language in either forging or destroying the connections amongst the senses, and between the senses and the intellect. Tomkis employs anatomical knowledge to make a critical point: that the double (or more) nature of the tongue allows Lingua to do what the other Senses cannot, namely, to parse information selectively, and that this ability poses a threat to an established sensory order. On an allegorical level, the play engages with contemporary English literary, medical, and philosophical theories about the tongue and its part in creating discourse to suggest that certain types of knowledge offer an alternative to dominant modes of accessing information about the world.

Please join us at 6:30pm for a reception prior to the event in the Olin Atrium.

Public Debate: Presidential War Powers

Wednesday, January 29, 20147–8:30 pm

Wallace Center at FDR InstituteThe Bard Debate Union is honored to be participating in this exciting public debate at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, sponsored by the Cross Examination Debate Association and the Miller Center on the topic of presidential war powers and indefinite detention. These debates are taking place at Presidential Libraries all over the country. The debate will feature students from Bard College, Cornell University, and St. John's University. Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement.